I think God grew tired of churches long before we did
Tired of men translating eternity
through microphones
Tired of watching humanity kneel
before buildings
while ignoring the trembling holiness
inside one another
My mother searched for Him everywhere
In Pentecostal heat
In Catholic incense
In prophecy
In oil pressed against foreheads
In men who claimed certainty
with frightening ease
She carried God from denomination to denomination
like a woman carrying a dying bird between her hands
afraid that if she loosened her grip even slightly
faith itself would escape
And I
I was baptized five times before adulthood
Five separate offerings to the water
Five attempts at becoming clean enough
for heaven to stop looking through me
Water over my hair
Water over my eyes
Water entering my mouth
while strangers said
be born again
But even then
I remember surfacing each time
feeling exactly the same
Only colder
Surely—I thought
God must grow weary of our desperation
Surely even He must ache
watching us wander endlessly
through sanctuaries
while He waits patiently for us
inside ordinary suffering
Because He was never only there
He was in my mother’s hands
smelling of detergent
In the quiet after arguments
In women removing their earrings at midnight
too tired to continue pretending strength
He was there
the night I cried so hard
my body shook against itself
and no miracle arrived except morning
Except breath
Except survival
I think that was God too
Not rescue
Not spectacle
Just the unbearable mercy
of remaining alive
And sometimes at night
when the world finally stops speaking
I close my eyes
and feel this immense heat
hovering softly against my eyelids
Not fire
Not punishment
A tenderness so luminous
it frightens me
I never open my eyes when it happens
I cannot
The warmth feels too familiar
Like being held
by a presence that witnessed every fracture of my life
and still
did not abandon me
Not when grief hollowed me into silence
Not when fear turned my body
into a house of locked doors
Not when I mistook survival for failure
Not when I lay awake at impossible hours
begging my own mind to spare me
It saw me then too
The woman crying quietly in parked cars
so no one inside the house would hear
Every version
Every unraveling
Every private devastation
carried so quietly
the world mistook my endurance for strength
Seen
Entirely seen
And somehow
Still loved
Not repaired
Not rescued
Loved
That is the part that undoes me
Not heaven
Not scripture
Not the promise of eternity
Only this unbearable possibility
That something vast and merciful
stood beside me through every sorrow I survived
without once turning away
And joy that pure
Cannot belong to coincidence
No
That is faith
Palpable faith
Faith with a pulse
Faith that enters the body quietly
until loneliness itself begins glowing from within
Now when I think of God
I do not imagine judgment
I imagine exhaustion
Divine exhaustion
The sorrow of loving humanity endlessly
while watching us search everywhere for Him
except the places He keeps appearing
The hospital room
The empty kitchen
The trembling body
The grieving mother
The lonely woman standing barefoot at dawn
trying one more time
to survive her own life
And still
Still
He comes
Without thunder
Only light
Only breath
Only the strange and merciful feeling
that something invisible
has loved us all along
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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